It was a sensational murder trial. The victim was George Wythe — teacher of Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and Henry Clay, a man so admired by his fellow Virginians that they left room for his signature on the Declaration of Independence above all of theirs, including Jefferson’s. Also dead was a young free man of color named Michael Brown, whom Wythe was tutoring in Latin, Greek and math.
The prime suspect was George Wythe Sweeney, Wythe’s grandnephew, who was living in Wythe’s house. Sweeney had a troubled history, having stolen some of Wythe’s possessions and forged Wythe’s name on checks amid rumors of gambling debts. And Sweeney had a motive: He and Brown were the main beneficiaries of Wythe’s will.
Yet in 1806 a jury acquitted Sweeney, precluding a satisfying end to the mystery of Wythe’s death.
The Missing Witness
The main witness for the prosecution ought to have been Lydia Broadnax, Wythe’s Black servant. Broadnax was preparing breakfast on May 25, 1806. She saw Sweeney pour himself a cup of coffee from a kettle, then throw a small white piece of paper into the fire. Wythe, Brown and Broadnax drank coffee from that kettle and all became ill. Only Broadnax survived. Arsenic was later found in Sweeney’s room.
The jury never heard Broadnax’s testimony. The Richmond Enquirer explained why: “Some of the strongest testimony exhibited...was kept from the petit jury. The reason is, that it was gleaned from the evidence of negroes.” Virginia law did not allow Black people to testify against white people.
We can only guess at the details of her early years, but Broadnax was born into slavery, probably in Virginia, around the early 1740s. We don’t know how she came to live in George Wythe’s household, but it’s clear she was there by 1783.
By this time, Wythe was a law professor at William & Mary and one of the foremost lawyers in the nation. He had enslaved many people throughout his life, but often expressed opposition to slavery. In 1782, emancipation laws were relaxed in Virginia and for the first time since 1723, enslavers could emancipate enslaved people without government approval. Wythe ultimately freed Broadnax.
Once emancipated, Broadnax continued to work in Wythe’s household for pay. By all accounts, she admired Wythe.
When Wythe moved from Williamsburg to Richmond in 1791, Broadnax followed him. By 1797, she purchased a home for herself. In this regard, she was unusual. When she died, she was one of only 50 Black Americans in Richmond, out of almost 6,000, who owned property. She also seems to have owned and operated a boardinghouse on her property.
Unable to testify in court, Broadnax shared her account at some point with George Wythe Munford, named for the law professor by one of Wythe’s students. Broadnax and Munford seemed to have known each other well. He eventually would serve as a witness for her will. Decades after the fact, Munford published a detailed account of Broadnax’s version of the events surrounding Wythe’s and Brown’s deaths. Imperfect as it is, his account is the closest thing we have to how Broadnax would have testified at the trial.
According to Munford, the day before the poisoning, Broadnax saw Sweeney rummaging through Wythe’s desk and inspecting Wythe’s will, which named Sweeney as its major beneficiary, along with Broadnax and Brown.
Sweeney left early the next morning, but not before Broadnax saw him handling the fatal coffee pot and throwing a “little white paper” into the kitchen fire. She thought nothing of his behavior at the time and served the coffee.
But in retrospect, she thought “it looks monstrous strange.”
The Medical Evidence
Even without Broadnax’s testimony, prosecutors hoped forensic evidence would condemn Sweeney. But the testimony of doctors had the opposite effect.
Three doctors conducted autopsies on Wythe and Brown. The three — James McClurg, James McCaw and William Foushee — were renowned not only in Virginia but in the United States. McClurg was one of Virginia’s representatives to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, as was Wythe.
Despite their sterling medical reputations, the doctors were not experts on poison. They did not conduct any of the tests that would have revealed the presence of arsenic.
McClurg testified that Wythe’s and Brown’s symptoms could have been produced by arsenic but could also be attributed to other causes, among them a buildup of black bile. Moreover, arsenic usually killed people within a few days. Brown lived for a week after the alleged poisoning and Wythe for two weeks. It is interesting to note that after Brown’s death, Wythe added a codicil to his will, removing Sweeney as a beneficiary.
What the doctors did not say at the trial — presumably because they did not know it — was that black bile was a common sign of arsenic poisoning. And while most people poisoned by arsenic did indeed die quickly, some lingered.
The defense attorneys were as renowned as the doctors. Edmund Randolph was the former attorney general of the United States and William Wirt would later become the attorney general. In contrast to the doctors, they performed their roles adroitly, using the doctors’ testimony to create reasonable doubt.
The white powder discovered in Sweeney’s room, for instance, was simply ratsbane, a common poison used to kill rats — and which contained arsenic.
After the Trial
In his will, Wythe left his houses in Richmond and his stocks to his neighbor William DuVal. The will directed that during their lifetimes, the profits from these investments should be directed to Broadnax and a formerly enslaved man named Benjamin. This wasn’t enough for Broadnax to survive. In 1807, she corresponded with President Jefferson, asking for his financial assistance.
She told him that “my eyesight has almost failed me” because of the poison that killed Wythe. Though she had a home, her “old age and infirmness of health” made it “extremely difficult in procuring merely the daily necessaries of life.” Without his “charitable aid,” she said, “I am fearful I shall sink under the burden.” Jefferson sent her $50.
Though acquitted of murder in 1806, Sweeney was convicted in that proceeding on two of four counts of forgery. He was sentenced to spend an hour in the pillory and six months in jail. That sentence was never executed. Sweeney left Virginia after the trial and was later convicted of horse theft in Tennessee, where he served several years in prison. What became of him after that is another mystery.